Wogs’ old dress was lovely—a floor length gown with flowing chiffon panels and a sweetheart neckline that gave it a timeless, Disney-princess look. But when Aunt Livy tried to fasten it up the back, the zipper wouldn’t budge more than a few inches, even when I held my breath.
“My word. You must be a size sixteen,” Aunt Livy said.
We were standing in the middle of “my” room—the cute little dormered nook where I’d stayed during those childhood summers. It was next door to Wogs’ grand boudoir—probably once the chamber for a ladies’ maid. “I don’t know how you could let yourself go like this. You’ll lose that wonderful man if you don’t start taking care of yourself.”
That wonderful man—I certainly hadn’t needed to worry about bringing Alistair here. It made sense, of course. The rich are indeed different, as Fitzgerald said, and Alistair was one of them. He had been shown to one of the grand suites in the sea-facing wing of the house. I hoped that meant he’d stay here for the whole vacation, since I wasn’t quite sure I’d be so welcome without him. I wish we’d discussed plans on the drive up, but Alistair wasn’t the planning sort.
Aunt Livy kept fussing with the dress. “I’ll call my dressmaker to see if she can possibly find time before tomorrow. She could let out the darts here…and here…and the chiffon should cover the repairs. But she’ll be furious that it’s such short notice.”
She made a phone call and sent me downstairs, my arm draped with rustly taffeta and billowing chiffon. “Tell Alistair to hurry,” Aunt Livy called from upstairs. “Claudette says she can take you, but she has another client coming at four.”
But Alistair and Uncle Con had disappeared from the dining room.
I ran back up to tell Aunt Livy. She seemed more annoyed than I was.
“It’s that ridiculous little car. I’m sure Con has insisted on taking that Triumph for a spin. He loves those tiny things. I’ve always told him a two-seater is a selfish car. No room for packages. Makes me furious.”
She took a ring of keys from her purse.
“You’ll have to drive yourself. I have to stay here to direct the decorators and the caterer’s people.” She handed me a key. “That’s the one to the Mercedes. Don’t touch Con’s Rolls or he’ll have a fit.”
She started to give elaborate directions, which I couldn’t follow. Not that it mattered. I didn’t know how to drive. Dad had never let me take driver’s ed. He said it took time away from academics. I think he feared it would also take me away from him.
Without pausing for breath, Aunt Livy bustled down the back stairs in the direction of the ballroom, so I followed, trailing pink chiffon. The grand hall took up two stories in the west wing of the house. It had always seemed a dusty, scary old place when I was small—but now it was being transformed into wonderland of pine and holly and glittery lights by a team of men on ladders, calling to each other in incomprehensible Canadian French.
“Pierre!” Aunt Livy called to one of the men. “Or is that Jacques?”
The man—agile and powerfully built—descended his ladder with easy grace.
“Just call me Jack, ma’am.” He gave us an impertinent grin. “Pierre is my dad.” He gestured at an older man carrying a large tree.
Then he turned and gave me a wink. A wink. I had no idea how to react. He was outrageously good-looking, with a tousle of dark hair and boyish dimples darkened by a sexy five-o’clock shadow.
Aunt Livy didn’t see the winking, thank goodness. She was focused on other disasters.
“No. Non. Pas ici!” she shouted a barrage of French as she ran to one of the men hanging a huge red and gold star from the center beam. “Pierre? Where’s Pierre?
The tree came running toward her.
Jacques, who obviously preferred to be called Jack, looked at the dress and the keys dangling from my fingers.
“You’re on your way to see Claudette?”
I nodded. “Yes, but I don’t drive, and my boyfriend’s gone off with the car…”
Jack grinned and relieved me of the key and the dress.
“I’d be honored to be your driver, Nicky.”
I followed him as he took off toward the garage.
“How do you know my name?”
He peered at me over my chiffon burden.
“Do you really not remember? Playing Monopoly on rainy summer days? Toasting marshmallows on the beach?”
His boyish grin triggered something like a memory, but nothing I could hang on to. I remembered so little from my life before my mother died.
Jack had no trouble finding Claudette’s house, because it turned out she was his aunt. “Our family has worked for the Conways for generations,” he said with something between pride and resignation.
He parked in front of a ramshackle house with a sagging porch, and two small children who were building a snowman in the front yard ran up to him with noisy welcome.
Jack played outside with the children while Claudette worked on the dress with magic that was worthy of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. When I tried on the finished product in front of her full-length mirror, I actually felt pretty. The rose color did indeed bring color to my pale winter skin. And I could breathe. A miracle.
Jack carried the dress to the car and carefully laid it on the back seat. As I paused to admire the now-finished snow man, a plump woman with her hair in curlers ran out from the house next door.
“Nicky! It’s you, isn’t it? My little Nicky, all grown up! Look how beautiful!”
She threw her arms around me.
“I saw you from the window. I didn’t know you were coming for Christmas. Polly should have told us.”
She gave me a kiss on each cheek. I suppose I looked as confused as I felt.
“Don’t say you don’t remember me—Mrs. Poirier? Your babysitter? I used to keep you and little Polly. Every summer. You were such an easy child. So well-behaved.”
Jack finished hugging his cousins goodbye and came over. “Nicky’s got some kind of amnesia, Mom. I guess there’s too much fancy college stuff in her brain to have room for kiddie memories.”
Finally something clicked in my brain. Images of a cozy house on wet afternoons. Big pitchers of purple Kool-Aid. Board games and lots of laughing. A mischievous little boy with a mass of black curls.
“Jackie? You’re Jackie Poirier? This is your mom?”
Jack nodded and gave me a lopsided grin.
Embarrassed, I gave Mrs. Poirier a tentative kiss on the cheek.
“So lovely to see you. I apologize for my bad memory. Everything that happened before, you know, my mother…”
Now it was Mrs. Poirier’s turn to be embarrassed. “Of course. I’m so sorry…” She hugged me again, sniffing back tears.
Jack harrumphed and stood by the open car door.
“Come on, Miss Conway. We need to get you back to Goose Hill and your boyfriend with the TR3.”
“Will you be home for supper, Jackie?” His mother hugged herself against the cold.
“Don’t count on us, Ma. You know Mrs. C. when she’s got an open house.”
Mrs. Poirier nodded.
“Your papa says she turns into General Patton.”
She waved goodbye as she ran back inside.
On the road back up to the house, Jack and I made pleasant, slightly awkward chit chat about our history over the last decade. I began to relax when Jack told me he was majoring in biology at the University of Maine and was planning to go to med school. I realized with a bit of a shock that he would have been perfectly presentable in the smokers of Cardigan Hall. Lois would adore him, and the Brontës would make charmingly lascivious remarks about his dark good looks.
He was telling a funny frat-boy story when we saw a TR3 speeding toward us on the two-lane road. The top was down, in spite of the cold. As it zoomed by, Uncle Con waved. From the driver’s seat. He was alone in the car.
“Conways always get what they want,” Jack said. “I hope he didn’t shove your boyfriend out into a snowbank.”
I let out a nervous giggle. I’d never known Alistair to let anybody drive his car. I did wish Uncle Con hadn’t had quite so much to drink. If he had an accident with the car, Alistair would never forgive me.
Jack patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m sure your friend is fine.”
I wasn’t entirely reassured. I realized I’d been rude leaving Alistair alone with my relatives without even telling him where I was going. I hoped I hadn’t made him mad.
Jack let out sigh. “Wow. You’re really serious about this guy, aren’t you?”
I felt my cheeks redden. “Does it show?”
Jack’s sympathetic smile unlocked some mental gate and my feelings came spilling out. I told him all about how Alistair and I had met, and how he had declared his love, and how he’d driven all the way up from Philadelphia to rescue me and how his mother was a super-rich jet-setter and he was a brilliant photographer who was going to be wildly famous some day.
I was still babbling when we pulled into the garage at Goose Hill. Jack ushered me into the house, carefully transporting the dress. As we entered through the back door, I heard the strains of Artie Shaw’s Begin the Beguine coming from the old Victrola in the front parlor. I also heard giggles. I guess I tensed, because Jack gave me a reassuring smile and walked with me to the parlor, even though the ballroom—and his work—were in the other direction.
When he opened the door, I saw them—my boyfriend and my aunt—dancing close. Really close. Aunt Livy was nuzzling Alistair’s neck as his hand rested on her left breast. Right on her stiff, pointy little breast.
But the sight set off nuclear devices in my head. I froze where I stood.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and through the mushroom clouds, I heard Jack gave a loud, silly laugh. He grabbed me in his arms and swirled me—and the dress—in a goofy waltz, dancing us over to where Alistair and a red-faced Aunt Livy were trying to compose themselves.
To hide my tears, I pulled Jack to me and gave him a fierce kiss, right on the lips.
Through the roar of humiliation and anger in my head, I heard stomping feet coming down the hallway. Stomps and shouting. I heard a female voice talking loudly about car mechanics.
The cavalry had arrived—in the form of Wogs and Judy.
“I finally found a mechanic in Springfield with half a brain,” Wogs announced, apparently oblivious to the tension in the room. “Somebody who didn’t look at a Renault as if it were a flying saucer from Betelgeuse.”
Jack pulled away from my ambush lip-lock with a relieved shout.
“Pollywog!” He escaped my grip and ran to give Wogs a playful, but obviously heartfelt hug. I could see real affection between them. But his laugh was all goofy phoniness. “We’re having a bunch of fun. Would you care for a dance?” He grabbed Wogs and twirled her toward her mother and Alistair.
Wogs’ friend Judy followed, still wearing a snowy parka and heavy boots. She looked as if she wanted to turn and run. But Alistair greeted her with a warm smile.
“Judy, Judy, Judy,” Alistair said in his best faux Cary Grant voice.
He hugged her as if they were old friends. Odd, since I didn’t remember introducing them. But I was grateful for his polished manners as he presented Judy to the still-blushing Aunt Livy.
“Judy’s the star of the Bryn Mawr hockey team, Olivia.”
He was calling her Olivia now. I tried to ignore that.
Jack released Wogs and reached for Alistair’s hand.
“And I’m Jack Poirier. Nicky and I are old friends. I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed her for the afternoon. She has such great things to say about you.”
Alistair offered me only glancing eye contact—as if we were strangers. My heart felt an awful chill.
“And why are you hugging my old dress like that, Jack?” Wogs said. “Are you planning to wear it to the Open House?”
Aunt Livy, now back in full control of herself, gave a harrumph and took custody of the chiffon and taffeta bundle.
“Jacques, your father needs you in the ballroom.”
She stroked the dress as if soothing it after a trauma, then turned to Wogs. “I had the dress altered for Nicky. Her father has been dreadful, so she’s come to stay with us for the holidays. Her friend Alistair too. I’m glad to see you all know each other.” She handed me the dress and turned to Judy. “Lovely to meet you. Welcome to Goose Hill. I’ll show you to your rooms.”
When I turned around, Jack was gone. Just as well. I was thoroughly embarrassed about that kiss. Not just because I’d used it to wound Alistair, but because I’d enjoyed it. Jack’s kiss had felt intense and dangerous and comfortable all at the same time.
And so very different from Alistair’s.